The problem with growing up is that once you’re grown up, the people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.
LEV GROSSMANI feel that’s one of the central questions of fantasy. What did we lose when we entered the 20th and 21st century, and how can we mourn what we lost, and what can we replace it with? We’re still asking those questions in an urgent way.
More Lev Grossman Quotes
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I think for a long time, I was paralyzed by some of my hopes and ideals for what my life was going to be like. I had this perfect vision of how my life should go, but it seemed – it was – impossible to realize, so I sat around for a long, long time doing almost nothing at all.
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A magician is strong because he feels the pain between what the world is and what he would make of it.
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Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.
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His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.
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I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.
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The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.
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It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.
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You’re all so obsessed with other worlds, you’re so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you’ve never bothered to figure out what’s going on here!
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I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
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I feel that’s one of the central questions of fantasy. What did we lose when we entered the 20th and 21st century, and how can we mourn what we lost, and what can we replace it with? We’re still asking those questions in an urgent way.
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Young minds – young brains – need stories and ideas like the ones in those [censored and banned] books in order to grow. They need ideas that you disagree with. They need ideas that I disagree with. Or they’ll never be able to figure out what ideas they believe in.
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The main advantage of being a reviewer is that you read a lot. A lot of books get sent to you, and you have an amazing vantage point from which to observe what’s going on in contemporary fiction – not only genre stuff, the whole spectrum.
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The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.
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Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do?” “Oh, absolutely,” Quentin said. “Maybe even more.
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He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.
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He wasn’t surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you’ve done all the work to get something you don’t even want it anymore.
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The real world is horrible.
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Supposedly I’ve got traces of an English accent, though I can’t hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who’s English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian.
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His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he’d gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.
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A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I’ve just gotten in the habit of forgiving.
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The truth doesn’t always make a good story, does it?
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We have lived too long. The great days are past.
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I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.
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Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it’s much too late.
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I recognize that on paper, you can’t really tell that I’m a fan or a nerd.
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The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution.
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